Table Of ContentTo Wear
the Dust of War
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To Wear
the Dust of War
From Bialystok to Shanghai
to the Promised Land
An Oral History
by Samuel Iwry
Edited by L. J. H. Kelley
TO WEARTHE DUSTOF WAR
Copyright © Samuel Iwry, 2004.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2004 978-1-4039-6575-2
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First published 2004 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™
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Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS.
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PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave
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division of St. Martin's Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd.
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Union and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-4039-6576-9 ISBN 978-1-4039-8120-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781403981202
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Iwry, Samuel.
To wear the dust of war : from Bialystok to Shanghai to the Promised Land
: an oral history / by Samuel Iwry ; edited by L.J.H. Kelley.
p. cm. -- (Palgrave studies in oral history)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4039-6576-9 (pbk.)
1. Iwry, Samuel. 2. Jews--Poland--Biography. 3. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-
1945)--Poland--Personal narratives. 4. Refugees, Jewish--China--Shanghai-
-Biography. 5. Refugees, Jewish--Maryland--Biography. I. Kelley, L.J.H. II.
Title. III. Series.
DS135.P63I895 2004
940.53’18’092--dc22
[B]
2004040005
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Design by planettheo.com
First edition: August 2004
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Series Editors’ Foreword. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi
Foreword: Samuel Iwry, My Father . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii
by J. Mark Iwry
Foreword: Samuel Iwry, Scholar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xv
by Kyle McCarter
Acknowledgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xvii
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix
Chronology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxiii
ONE
Three Worlds, Three Lives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
TWO
Into the Dark Tunnel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
THREE
The Japanese Diplomat in Lithuania . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
FOUR
Across Russia to Japan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
FIVE
Shanghai Ghetto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
SIX
20,000 Refugees, Two Visas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
SEVEN
Coming to America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
EIGHT
The Master and the Scrolls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
NINE
Teacher, Scholar, Grandfather . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
EPILOGUE
Nina Rochman Iwry by J. Mark Iwry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Suggestions for Additional Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Series Editors’ Foreword
Oral history usually is defined as an interactive process. An interviewer asks
questions and the person being interviewed, the interviewee, responds.
Ideally, the questions are open-ended and the answers are lengthy and
complete. The interview, however, is shaped by the interaction between the
two participants. On the other hand, some practitioners who conduct life
histories may begin by asking their subject to tell about their life and then
refrain from intervening in the remainder of the interview or do so very
infrequently. This oral history of Samuel Iwry combines both approaches
with a greater emphasis on the latter. As described by Leslie Kelley, Dr. Iwry
would hold forth and set the agenda for discussion. Her intervention
emerges as an editor more than an interviewer. She shaped Iwry’s story once
it was transcribed, placed it in chronological order, checked facts, and filled
in historical gaps. In many respects, this is the life story of Sam Iwry as told
to Leslie Kelley. While this raises certain methodological questions for oral
historians related to the purity of the interview and the desire to capture a
verbatim and true account, it does not detract from the very dramatic and
compelling tale that Sam Iwry tells. The substance of the story, its particular
emphases and shadings, the unique voice—all are Iwry’s, the result of hours
and hours of interviews.
Many of the critical issues of twentieth-century history erupt on the
pages that follow, which tell the story of one man’s resilience in the face of
world peril. Pre–World War II Eastern European Jewish life, the tragedy of
the Holocaust, the world of uprooted refugees, the humanitarian act of
courage by a Japanese diplomat, the community as well as the danger and
brutality of Shanghai under Japanese rule, the birth of the state of Israel, and
immigration to the United States all are a part of Sam Iwry’s sojourn
through the twentieth century. Less dramatic, but of great historical
significance, is his life as a scholar of Hebrew and Near Eastern Studies and
his contribution to our understanding of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Iwry’s
coming to America completed a life that met its full potential at the
Series Editors’ Foreword/VII
Baltimore Hebrew College and the Johns Hopkins University, where his
teaching and research excelled.
One of the great values of oral history is its ability to humanize the story
being told. Leslie Kelley’s presentation of Sam Iwry’s account does just that
and accomplishes another important purpose. It offers a contextual frame-
work for the narrative that is offered. In this sense also, it fits well with the
Palgrave Studies in Oral History series, which is designed to make history
accessible to the general reader as well as to students and accomplished
scholars.
Linda Shopes
Pennsylvania Historical Museum Commission
Bruce M. Stave
University of Connecticut
F O R E W O R D
Samuel Iwry, My Father
by J. Mark Iwry
The truth is, my father never was eager to write this book. Probably the
prospect of reliving the Holocaust was too wrenching. He has never lost
sight of the bitter reality: For every grateful survivor with a story of
miraculous escape, there were 100 innocents, including his parents and
sisters, and his wife’s parents and sisters, whose lives were cut off (as he
describes in his narrative) in a manner that was—for him, quite literally—
unspeakable.
My father has always felt acutely the absence of the six million and their
would-be offspring: how much more robust and creative our people, Israel
and the world would be today had they not been cut down. At the same time,
no one was more alive to the miracle of Israel’s birth from the ashes of the
Holocaust. In fact, he never made peace with the fate that took him to “the
other Promised Land,” America instead of Israel, where he felt he really
belonged. And yet, as a new American, Sam became profoundly loyal to his
new homeland.
Bemused by what he viewed as many Americans’ naiveté, and put off
by the hype and commercialism he sometimes saw here, my father
nonetheless became an admirer and champion of the American spirit and
character. He treasured America’s freedoms and values as only one who lived
so much of his life without them could. In contrast, his graphic narrative
bears witness to the hollowness and mendacity of Soviet Communism,
including its dispiriting effects on ordinary people, its impoverishment,
Samuel Iwry, My Father/IX
and, more broadly, the evils of overbearing bureaucracy. My parents’
experience (my mother’s story is briefly recounted in the epilogue) explains
their hard-won skepticism of politicians and governing authority and its
potentially heavy hand under any system.
My father never could (or would) have put the Holocaust behind him;
in his words, he would always “wear the dust of war.” As the book describes,
during his work in the underground he narrowly escaped death several times
in Europe and Russia and endured physical torture in the Shanghai prison
camp. (My mother saved his life on that occasion.) But his sharpest pain was
self-inflicted. He never stopped torturing himself over his inability to save
his parents—or his sisters and their families—from their horrifying fate,
even as he was able to save many others.
After all four parents and most of their siblings were murdered for
being Jewish, my parents hesitated to bring another child into this world,
especially a Jewish child. And after deciding to have just one, they always
sought to protect me from the horrors their families had suffered in the Old
World. But they themselves never left those horrors behind: at age 93, my
father’s sleep was still disturbed by nightmares of his parents’ fate and of the
Shanghai prison camp.
Already a product of the European and Jewish enlightenment, experi-
encing the Holocaust made it harder for him to maintain a simple
unquestioning faith in a providential Supreme Being. As a hard-headed but
by no means hard-hearted rationalist, my father’s identity was bound up in
the unique character, history, and contributions of the Jewish nation,
“walking in history under G-d,” as he put it. His teaching stressed the
centrality of learning, study, and questioning in the Jewish tradition.
At the same time, his bitter wartime experience convinced him of the
ultimate importance of what he called “simple decency.” His teaching
brought out how decency and respect for human life and dignity have been
integral Jewish values since the Hebrew people originally rejected polythe-
ism and paganism in favor of monotheism and the single, absolute moral
order. And he was vigilant against modern forms of idol worship and
paganism--totalitarianism, political fanaticism, materialism, or a losing of
self in the frivolous or ephemeral.
Deeply learned in Bible, Hebrew, classical and modern Hebrew
literature, and Jewish history and culture, my father was devoted to his
people, their unique civilization, and their new, hard-won national home in
Israel. Accordingly, when he prayed, it was not so much to, as with—not to
an anthropomorphic deity, but with his people, as an act of humility and a
